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Baseball fans around the world are fascinated by Shohei Ohtani. In an era of highly specialized baseball players, Ohtani is an anomaly. He is a good enough pitcher to be a valuable addition to the starting rotation of any big-league team, and he is a middle-of-the-lineup home run hitter whose power numbers are among the best in baseball.
Remember in our youth when the best pitchers on our baseball teams were also our best hitters? What happened to those guys? Some became shortstops, outfielders, or first basemen. They started attending hitting camps and perfecting their swing. Others sold their bats at yard sales, learned to throw a slider, and never went near a batting cage after high school. If you want to succeed at baseball’s highest level, you must commit as a teenager to being a pitcher or a position player. There are not enough hours in the day to practice the skills necessary to succeed at both. Apparently, that is not the case in Oshu, Japan.
“It does not matter how much you say about Ohtani… it is not enough. What he is doing now is not humanly possible.” Joe Posnanski, The Athletic, 8-20-2021
Shohei Ohtani is often compared to Babe Ruth, but he is far behind the Bambino statistically. Ruth won 94 games as a major league pitcher, hit 714 home runs, and posted a career batting average of about .342. Ohtani has 45 pitching victories, 290 career homers, and a batting average of .282 over a nine-year big-league career.
So far this season, Ohtani is among the leaders in several hitting categories, and his Earned Run Average is below one run per game. Our obsession with Shohei’s accomplishments comes from the rarity of professional pitchers who are accomplished hitters. One hundred years ago, a right-handed pitcher/outfielder from Saline County, Arkansas, was also an exception to that assumption. His story is lost in the shadows of baseball history.
In 1930, James Edward Zinn played in 105 games in the Pacific Coast League, a minor league considered to be a small step below the majors. He pitched in 39 games and appeared in 66 games as a position player or pinch hitter. Jimmy Zinn led the PCL in pitching victories with 26, and he hit .326 in 193 at-bats. Unlike the pitchers who had good hitting seasons a time or two in their career, winning 20 games and batting .300 were expectations in the 23 seasons Zinn played professional baseball. He won 20 games or more five times, 18 in three other seasons, and he batted better than .300 ten times. At age 35, the 1930 season was the most productive year in a 23-year career that almost ended years earlier.
On July 3, 1915, while playing for the Fort Smith Twins in his first pro season, Jimmy Zinn’s career took a life-changing turn. In a 1989 interview with SABR historian Mark Bernstein, Zinn described the impetuousness of youth that led to what seemed to be a career disaster. “I went riding with a friend in a stripped-down Ford, of course, that was something big for kids back then. It did not have a seat. I sat on a toolbox on the back side. He went around a corner, and off I went. I hit the back of my right shoulder and drove my clavicle out.”
Doctors in New Orleans advised Zinn to undergo a procedure to secure the dislocation with surgical wire, but, with no assurance that he would pitch again, the young pitcher declined. For the remainder of his life, Zinn’s pitching delivery was modified to compensate for the deformed angle of his right arm.
Despite the injury, the Phillies invited Zinn to Spring Training in 1917, where the struggling pitcher with the injured right arm met Hall of Famer Grover Cleveland “Old Pete” Alexander. The venerable old hurler taught him the unique side-arm style that saved his career. Zinn would later credit his altered delivery as an asset to his pitching success by taking the stress off his right arm.
After working through his new pitching technique for four seasons in the Texas League, Zinn eventually received a late-season call-up to the Philadelphia Phillies in 1919. Although he earned only one pitching win in his brief introduction to big-league baseball, Zinn’s adventure also included not-so-successful encounters with some of the most intimidating superstars of the day. In his first start, he lost a decision to the great Walter Johnson, and, in another outing, he gave up three hits to Ty Cobb. On the positive side, in what would become his trademark, Zinn hit a home run, knocked in 3 runs, and batted .308 in his ten games in the majors.
After the 1919 season, Philadelphia had no long-range plans for Zinn and sold his contract to the Pittsburgh Pirates, who gave Zinn his second big-league promotion in late 1920. He spent the last month of the 1920 season and all the 1921 season in the major leagues, where he won eight games and lost seven. Zinn appeared in five games late in 1922, but his days at baseball’s highest level were essentially over. For the next 17 years, Zinn would pitch in a few big-league games, but in the eyes of pro baseball, he was a baseball anomaly, a pitcher who could hit.
From 1923 to his ultimate retirement in 1939, Jimmy Zinn would win 220 games on the mound and bat .300 in almost 2,000 at-bats. Included in that phenomenal run was the career year of 1930, when he batted .326 and led the highly respected PCL with 26 pitching wins.
Does Jimmy Zinn hold a distinction unmatched in professional baseball? Researchers at the Robinson-Kell Chapter of SABR conclude that Zinn is the only pitcher in baseball history to have 300 professional pitching victories and a lifetime batting average above .300. In games at all levels, he is credited with 308 professional pitching victories. Zinn posted a cumulative batting average of .301 in more than 2,500 professional at-bats.
Jimmy Zinn retired quietly to Little Rock, Arkansas, where he worked for the Arkansas Highway Department and volunteered at the Conway, Arkansas, Human Development Center. Despite unequaled accomplishments in pro baseball, he has yet to be inducted into the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame or the PCL Hall of Fame. He died in Memphis on February 26, 1991, at age 96.
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